12/30/12 11:20 AM EST

Center-right columnist David Brooks says that Republicans have had a "brain freeze" since the election, but President Barack Obama has to be more grounded and build trust with them if he wants to get anything done in his second term.

"Most of the blame still has to go to Republicans. They’ve had a brain freeze since the election. They have no strategy. They don’t know what they want. They have to decide what they want," Brooks said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "But if I had to fault President Obama, I would say that sometimes he governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization.

"He comes in here, and he will not — he’ll talk with [House Speaker John] Boehner, [but] he won’t talk with the other Republicans. He hasn’t built the trust."

Brooks said Boehner made a significant concession by offering $800 billion in revenues, but "the trust wasn’t there to get that done." And, he said, the president will have to address that going forward.

“It's got to be a lot more than making the intellectual concessions," Brooks said. “It's got to get to the place where Republicans say ‘OK, we’ll take a risk; this guy won’t screw us.' They do not feel that way.”